A technique or device designed to bring about a desired state by means of its own action. 2. That part of a computer program that may be used to establish another version of the computer program. 3. The automatic procedure whereby the basic operating system of a processor is reloaded following a complete shutdown or loss of memory. 4. A set of instructions that cause additional instructions to be loaded until the complete computer program is in storage. 5. To initialize a system by means of a bootstrap.